Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Statement by the President Following a Meeting To, Review Goals for Medical Research and Health Services.

June 27, 1966

TODAY, I have met with Secretary Gardner, the Surgeon General, and the top Government team connected with medical research and health services. These men constitute my strategy council in the war against disease. We began a review of the targets and the timetable they have set for winning victories in this war.

The National Institutes of Health are spending more than $800 million a year on biomedical research. I am keenly interested to learn not only what knowledge this buys but what are the payoffs in terms of healthy lives for our citizens.

We know what has been achieved in the past. The widespread application of polio vaccines reduced that dread disease from 34,000 cases in 1954 to almost zero last year.

Medical research helped cut the tuberculosis death rate by 87 percent since the end of World War II. The number of hospital beds occupied by tuberculosis victims has been cut in half.

Ten years ago experts predicted there would be an increase of more than 200,000 patients in State mental hospitals within a decade. Yet today, largely as a result of psychiatric research and new drugs, there has been not an increase but a reduction of 83,000 patients.

These examples provide dramatic proof of what can be achieved if we apply the lessons of research to detect, to deter, and to cure disease. The Nation faces a heavy demand on its hospitals and health manpower. Medical research, effectively applied, can help reduce the load by preventing disease before it occurs, and by curing disease when it does strike.

But the greater reward is in the well-being of our citizens. We must make sure that no life-giving discovery is locked up in the laboratory.

I plan to meet again in a few months with my health strategy council to review their plans and to establish our goals.

Note: A list Of the members of the President's "health strategy council" was furnished to members of the press along with the text of the President's statement. Listed as members were Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John W. Gardner, Under Secretary Wilbur J. Cohen, Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs Dr. Philip R. Lee, the Surgeon General, Dr. William Stewart, 17 officials of the Public Health Service, and the Chief Medical Director of the Veterans Administration, Dr. H. Martin Engle, and his assistant.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President Following a Meeting To, Review Goals for Medical Research and Health Services. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238650

Filed Under

Categories

Simple Search of Our Archives